Big Data and AI Can Defend Democracy--Or Destroy It

Today's world is full of sensors, and the higher your nation-state is on the advanced-industrial food chain, the more likely it is that you carry a sensor on your person every minute of every day (and for many, even while asleep). That matters: the data collected by these sensors can be stored, analyzed, and weaponized. And although most of today's data collectors are for-profit corporations, there are dire risks alongside the potential for breakthroughs in areas such as medicine and global warming. The collection, analysis, storage, and theft of information about you have lethal implications; both for you as an individual and for all of us in terms of interstate war. In his 2018 book AI Superpowers, author and entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee likened big data to the new crude oil and noted that insofar as the analogy holds, that would make the People's Republic of China (PRC) the world's data Saudi Arabia.